Article 80 of Chapter 552 (the Development Planning Act) allows for the revocation of planning permissions within five years of their issuance
‘(1) The Planning Board may, only in:
(a) the cases of fraud; or
(b) the submission of any information, declaration or plan which is incorrect or does not reflect the situation onsite; or
(c) where there is an error on the face of the record; or
(d) where public safety is concerned,
by a decision revoke or modify any development permission granted under this Act, including any clearance issued by the Planning Board under an Order, stating in such decision its reasons for so doing and indicating in a clear manner the legal basis for the revocation.
Upon any such request made by any person to revoke or modify a permission in terms of this Act, or out of its own motion, the Executive Chairperson must prepare his recommendations to the Planning Board as to whether the development permission should be revoked or modified and invite both the applicant and the person making the request, if any, to make written submissions.
The Planning Board shall communicate the date and time of its hearing to the applicant and to the interested person making the request under this article, if any. During such hearing the Planning Board shall also hear the said applicant’s submissions, if the latter opts to attend, the interested person’s submissions, if any, and any other person’s submissions:
Provided that the Executive Chairperson may in relation to any development permission, including any clearance issued under an Order after the date of coming into force of this Act, commence proceedings to revoke or modify any such development permission, including any clearance issued by the Planning Board under an Order, within five years from the date of issuing of the development permission, including any clearance issued under an Order.
(2) For the purposes of sub-article (1):
“fraud” means the submission to the Planning Board of any information, declaration or plan on the basis of which the Planning Board has approved a development permission, where such information, declaration or plan is false;
“incorrect information, declaration or plan” means the submission to the Planning Board of any information, declaration or plan on the basis of which the Planning Board has approved a development permission, where such information, declaration or plan does not reflect the situation on site or is erroneous or mistaken;
“error on the face of the record” means an error made by the Planning Board in reaching a decision and such error is apparent from the records of its proceedings:
Provided that the Planning Board shall not revoke or modify a development permission on the basis of fraud or incorrect information, declaration or plan or error on the face of the record, where such circumstance did not have a material bearing on the issuing of the development permission in such a manner that had the correct information been available at the time of the decision the outcome would not have been different.
(3) The applicant, or the interested person making a request under this article shall, if he feels aggrieved by the decision taken by the Planning Board, have a right to appeal the Planning Board’s decision to the Tribunal within thirty days from the date of the hearing when the decision was taken.
(4) No compensation may be demanded from the Authority when it acts under the provisions of sub-article (1) where the reason for the revocation or a modification of a development permission is based on fraud, incorrect information, declaration or plan, or error on the face of the record or for considerations of public safety’
In this blog post, I will focus only on “error on the face of the record”, which is perhaps the most challenging and slippery ground, often stretched like chewing gum by those seeking to have permits revoked. An error on the face of the record is supposed to be a clear and obvious mistake — one that anyone reading the decision can see immediately, without thinking, without interpretation, without mental gymnastics.
To put it bluntly: It is like seeing a Ferrari pass by — you don’t need to think twice about what you are looking at. If a judge, a tribunal, or the Authority has to stop and think, weigh arguments, or interpret facts and policies, then it is not an error on the face of the record. It is as simple as that.
One of the most common but wrong arguments made under Article 80 is that a permit should be revoked because the planning authority applied the “wrong” policies or failed to consider others. But deciding which policies apply in a given planning application is a matter of planning judgment — it requires discretion, evaluation of facts, and expert reasoning. That is precisely why it can never be an error on the face of the record. If an applicant or objector thinks the wrong policies were applied, that argument may be a ground of appeal, but it is never a ground for revocation under Article 80. Otherwise, Article 80 would be turned into a disguised appeal procedure — which the law never intended.
The simplest way to test if something is an error on the face of the record is this: ‘If spotting the mistake requires thought, analysis, or interpretation — if you have to think whether there is an error — then it is not an error on the face of the record.’
Errors on the face of the record are, therefore, blatant mistakes. Meaning that when one considers that our planning authority is expected to choose from entire policy documents that often contain over a hundred policies, it becomes even clearer why the selection of which policies apply cannot, by its very nature, amount to an error on the face of the record. Even if someone argues that it was “obvious” which policy should have been applied, the act of selecting relevant policies requires judgment, interpretation, and contextual evaluation. It is simply not a mechanical exercise. The decision-maker has to assess the specific circumstances of the case, the planning considerations, and how different policies interact. That process is fundamentally one of discretion, not a matter of obvious error. Therefore, if determining which policies apply requires any degree of reasoning or weighing — as it inevitably does — it falls outside the ambit of an error on the face of the record. To argue otherwise would reduce Article 80 to a general tool for second-guessing planning judgments, which was never its purpose.
In sum, error on the face of the record under Article 80 should remain a narrow, conservative ground, limited to obvious and undeniable mistakes. It should never become a tool to re-argue policy selection or planning discretion. If we forget this, legal certainty will suffer, and Article 80 risks becoming an endless battle over permits that were lawfully issued in the exercise of discretion.
